© Jason Wakefield
University of Cambridge
Everyday Life and Imperial Thoughts
Sigmund Freud’s The Psychopathology of Everyday Life was one of the most widely translated and
circulated works of German psychology in the last century. This psychoanalytic and clinical
approach to analyzing psychopathological cases has been now superseded by neuro-scientific
techniques of analysis, thus Freudian psychoanalysis must be considered in terms of its historical
and sociological context. Despite the century of cognitive thought that has evolved from and against
Freudian psychoanalysis, there are elements of this text, in particular the chapter on errors, which
are equally as relevant to today’s pioneers in neuroscience, cognitive psychology and criminology.
One day a patient reminded me to give him the two books on Venice that I had
promised him, as he needed them in preparation for a journey at Easter. “I have
them ready,” I replied, and went to the library to fetch them. The truth, however,
was that I had forgotten to look them out, for I did not entirely approve of my
patient’s journey, which I saw as an unnecessary interruption of the treatment and a
material loss to the physician’ (Freud: 1975: 221).
Here Freud is confessing an ethical error. He describes the patient as a material loss, rather than as a
personal loss. His disapproval of the journey was for scientific reasons and not for reasons of the
patient’s treatment or cure. The process of psychoanalysis was more important than the process of
treatment and rehabilitation. His shame in front of the patient was a reversal of the symptomatic
acts that Freud wished to correct in the patient. The illusion that Freud was conducting
psychoanalytic treatment for humane or ethical reasons was undermined by the fact that he was
more concerned about psychoanalysis than the actual patient. When this error is applied directly to a
neuro-scientist working in Cambridge, England today (in the role that a clinical psychoanalyst did
during Freud’s era), we see scientific theory replacing humanity. This erases the priveledged socio –
symbolic status and integrity of the man or woman in the white laboratory coat. In the light of
Freud's error, a contemporary neuro-scientist has no justification or ethical validation in inhibiting a
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patient’s freedom for reasons of scientific research. Utilitarianism may be used as a counterargument, in that the neuro-scientific research conducted on a particular test – subject or patient
may potentially benefit a greater overall number of people. This however is nullified automatically
because that would condone and catalyse multiple cases of the error that shamed Freud. If ethical
errors are permitted (in isolated cases) for reasons of scientific methodology, then multiple copies of
the ethical infringement are prone to be repeated through out society. Freud’s moral transgression
inverted his authority over the patient, thus any replication of the transgression perhaps inverts all
scientific authority on socio-psychological grounds of legitimacy. If we draw a parallel between
Freud's shame in front of his patient and the collapse of paternal authority over a child, then the Ego
Ideal and the prohibitive superego no longer set the standard of what is good. The recording of
mental, neuronal / synaptic activity has changed a lot since Freud’s era. Behavioral and cognitive
processes are catalogued by neuro-scientists with far bigger medical research budgets and funding
then the clinical psychoanalysts of Freud’s era. The decline of the symbolic big Other of
psychoanalysis has been superseded with the decline of the symbolic big Other of neuroscience.
The ethical issues have also mutated, but the same Freudian shame applies to many of our
contemporary neuro-scientists, despite its concealed, anonymous circuitry.
Many government and University funded laboratories of today have several teams of neuroscientists working in conjunction with criminologists, anthropologists and cognitive psychologists.
Some of these teams have justified the complete destruction of particular habitats during the course
of research or data collection with the argument that if the habitat is unoccupied then there can be
no objection. This is a fallacy. Destroying any environment, under any circumstance, is extremely
arrogant in an anthropomorphic sense and perhaps even damaging to the moral fabric of humanity.
One will clarify and unpack this idea, then draw out the logical progression from the previous idea.
As we inhabit a limited geographical space with a finite amount of people, we can not sacrifice any
territory or any person in any circumstance. If we had an infinite population of people, who all lived
infinite lives, occupying a boundless territory, then we could sacrifice geographic locations and
individual patients for scientific, anthropological or utilitarian reasons. As we do not have an
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infinite excess of territory or people, scientific utilitarianism is unjustified. A Deleuzo – Guattarian
might argue against this, suggesting that we are desiring – machines, thus can be experimented with
as such, as there is an infinite space for internal deterritorilazion available. This also has no validity,
as the internal structure of the psyche has a finite number of motor neurons in the brain controlling
its processes. The cerebral cortex, cerebellum and corpus callosum limit the brain's activities and
the possibilities of deterritorilazion. This imposes a limit on the schizoanalysis one might find in
Anti-Oedipus: 'What is the meaning of this distinction between two regions: one molecular and the
other molar; one microphysic or micrological. The other statistical and gregarious?' (Deleuze &
Guattari 2000: 283). We no longer need to find the meaning of this distinction because both of the
regions are limited and finite, thus we cannot sacrifice any territority or any person.
If we take the problematic of territory in a geographical, physical context, we can connect the
shame of Freud to the shame of many practicing neuro-scientists, criminologists and cognitive
psychologists today. In a hypothetical scenario, if one where to create an invisible prison, in a
variation of the Zimbardo prison experiment of 1971, we can elucidate the moronic ethical flaws
inherited partially from Freud’s legacy. Zimbardo had to abort his prison experiment after only six
days due to the abnormal behavior of those assigned roles as guards and those assigned prisoners.
Despite Zimbardo abruptly aborting the psychological test due to ethical reasons, this has not
prevented copies and variations of the experiment being conducted. In 2002, the BBC televised a
variation of the experiment, conducted by Haslam and Reicher, despite the brutality of the affects of
solitary confinement in Zimbardo’s test. In 2006, Zimbardo’s On Rethinking the Psychology of
Tyranny denounced and rejected the repetition of his experiment by Haslam and Reicher as simply
reality television with no scientific base or value. The response in Debating the Psychology of
Tyranny: Fundamental Issues of Theory, Perspective and Science was ‘we feel that one of our major
achievements was to show that it was possible to address big and powerful issues while behaving
ethically’ (Haslam & Reicher 2006: 55). What Haslam and Reicher lacked was the shame that Freud
articulated in 1901. Zimbardo, in an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle, described the
BBC study as quite odious and shallow, masquerading as something deeper. Despite Zimbardo’s
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insistence that his original test was an error, the BBC still televised the copy by Haslam and
Reicher. What further exemplifies the stupidity of Haslam and Reicher is attempting to mix
scientific data with television. There can be no validity of scientific data when the test – subjects are
aware of the artificiality of their environment. Any experiment is null and void from the out set.
Now if we take these concrete examples of scientific stupidity and highlight them in a hypothetical
sense, the scenario arises at what might happen if the BBC study was repeated and expanded. If the
prison environment was extended to the geographical boundaries of a city, instead of Zimbardo’s
confinement of the prison environment to the basement of Stanford University, perhaps Freud’s
shame would be magnified in manifold directions. The shame might also be shared also by neuroscientists and criminologists due to a shared lack of ethical integrity. To clarify, if a neuro – scientist
endorsed an extension of the BBC prison experiment on the grounds that it may shed light on the
link between oppression and neural plasticity, then evil is promoted through negative, distressing
stimuli in the misleading guise of positive, scientific research. The only affect oppressive inhibitions
can have on neural plasticity, is in a negative rewiring of synapses, as the production and
comprehension of human language processing is in the network of frontal, parietal and temporal
cortical loci. Haslam and Reicher recreating Zimbardo’s experiment is ethically similar to how
Dachau was used as the prototype and model for the other concentration camps by Himmler’s SS.
A criminologist might argue that recreating the BBC prison experiment on the scale of a city
(such as Cambridge, England) might help advance theory in the realms of restorative justice. This is
underpinned by the notion that when a crime is committed it is the state that suffers and not just the
individual people involved. Freud’s shame is shared by these criminologists, as what we create is an
unwitting recreation and multitude of SS-esque guards. As the Zimbardo test results proved, guards
in artificial prison environments tend to develop sadistic tendencies, thus an extension of the BBC
prison experiment would have nothing to contribute to justice, but have the exact opposite affect
and corrode the values of society. Freud was Jewish, thus the potential implications of his own
psychopathological errata are concerning. He emigrated to England from Vienna just before the out
break of World War II. A basic response from a criminologist defending the BBC prison experiment
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would perhaps include a paraphrase of Churchill’s quip that if ‘Hitler where to invade Hell, I would
make a favorable reference to the Devil to the House of Commons.’ This perhaps would entail
changing the national anthem. Churchill was of course positing the mass murderer Stalin as slightly
superior to Hitler, as the lesser of two evils. This absurdity is an idea that one must fundamentally
reject. There is no such thing as a superior murderer. The law can not be upheld or enforced by the
government or its police force if the legislative body endorses murder. This is reflected in the tragic
shooting of Mark Duggan, an unarmed man, by the SO19 firearm unit of the Metropolitan police on
4th August 2011 in Tottenham, London. It is illegal for citizens to carry firearms in the U.K without
a licence, yet the current coalition government is one of the world's largest arms exporters.
Instead of SOI9 shooting Duggan, perhaps he could have been incarcerated instead. Angela Y.
Davis perhaps would reject this alternative, abolish prisons altogether and redistribute wealth and
power so that society does not need them. Prison serves a symbolic and industrial function for
criminologists. Without prisons, criminologists would not have a career or a discourse, thus
abolitionists like Davis are perpetually apeased with slight reforms. Criminologists, in their
formation of prison regimes, engage mandatory work as a way of therapeutic control. This is to
deflect attention away from the human rights catastrophes inherent in many institutions. Arbeit
macht frei, was a slogan emblazoned on the gates of Nazi concentration camps, translated as work
sets one free. This ethos is symbolic of many enforced labour camps and prisons, where anticathexis occurs, opposing the impulsive cathexes made by the id towards objects or freedom.
Duggan was killed, not so much because he was a threat to killing somebody but because aspects of
his work and cathexes were not regulated by society. From both a socio-economic and
psychological perspective, what is not regulated by the government is a threat to the absolute
control of the state. Fractions of society that undermine state authority and escape the systematic
control of the government are suspect to monitoring and surveillance by the police. The Nazi
illusion that work sets one free can be juxtaposed with the motive behind Duggan’s shooting. As
Duggan was not working and thinking within the confines of what the Metropolitan police deemed
acceptable, he was monitored and tragically killed. In Freudian terms, we can perhaps see
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symptoms of the death drive in both S019 officers and Duggan alike, where an equilibribium of
entropic non – activity was sought.
My lords, look where the sturdy rebels sits Even in the chair of state! Belike he means,
Backed by the power of Warwick, that false peer,
To aspire unto the crown and reign as king.
Earl of Northumberland, he slew thy father And thine, Lord Clifford – and you both have vowed revenge
On him, his sons, his favourites, and his friends.
(Shakespeare Richard Duke of York)
Richard Plantagenêt, 3rd Duke of York and 4th Earl of Cambridge died in battle before securing
the throne of England. He was leader of the opposition from 1450 to 1452 but tragically died soon
after being promised to be made King after Henry's death. He was killed at the battle of Wakefield
during the war of the roses in 1460. No memoir remains of Richard, except for the fiction of
Shakespeare and propaganda. His corpse was decapitated and his head placed on a pike for public
display adorning a paper crown. This was a public warning to dissuade any potential individuals to
acquire too much power. In the centuries that have passed, we still have the same hierarchy between
sovereign and state, yet the methods to control individuality and power has evolved. The techniques
employed by authority figures have developed and advanced as technology has evolved. These
techniques include manipulation of Freudian ideas, such as modification of disavowal, where egos
are split by distressing demands from the public, outer world. Placing York's head on the spike,
deprives the individual of a dignified burial and becomes a sacrificial vessel representing state
power. It was displayed in public as a symbolic gesture, not so much for any inherent evil on the
part of York, but as a vulgar spectacle of authority. The elegance of royalty evaporates with a ugly
portrayal of power for powers sake. York's humiliation was not a display of justice, but a vulgar
caricature of justice.
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Today, Cambridge in England is a different place; we have Prince William as the Duke. The
war for state power is a psychological and ideological struggle, rather than a physical one of sheer
physical brutality that one might have encountered during York's epoch. 'Until they become
conscious they will never rebel, and only until after they have rebelled they cannot become
conscious' (Orwell 1989: 74). Harassment is not done physically by the state but psychologically
through manipulating the vicissitudes of drives by forced isolation through incarceration and
chemical castration. Freud believed that the mind arose from drives, the ego and the id. S019,
SOCA and their colleagues have used covert surveillance to moniter suspects and where possible to
manipulate suspect's vicissitudes and psychic life. Although operations on the vicissitudes and drive
derivitives on ordinary people is damaging, contradictory and counter-productive towards the
national interest of the U. K's democracy, it is a secret agenda in military and police criminology. It
is corruptive of civil liberties and violates international law; but as the psyche is unseen, no tangible
evidence can be documented. Monitoring citizens with physical surveillance, wire-tapping,
electronic eavesdropping of internet activity or phone hacking breaks the legislation outlined in the
Data Protection Act 1998 and Article 8 of the Human Rights Act. This includes unlawful
obtaining of personal data without the consent of the data controller and its disclosure to another
person of the information. This is illegal and an offence. Shadowing, bugging, slandering and
blacklisting is used to divide and isolate the populace or silence dissenters. The information
gathered from these tactics is manipulated, falsified, adjusted and abbreviated to undermine the
authority of powerful individuals who think independently of some ministers, officials and
scientists with personal, unprofessional agendas. As a reaction to this independence of thought, ego
cathexes and endopsychic conflicts are manipulated by these authorities with spite. In some cases,
disinformation and lies are spread to target, demoralize and then modify the behavior of the free
thinking individual. This is too mislead the community surrounding the targeted individual; to ease
brainwashing of the individual with mind and behavioural control techniques. Attempts are made to
brainwash the individual through subjection to psychological coercion, often through the help of
friends and colleagues who are sometimes deceived by a false perception that an evil deed needs to
be done for a non-existent greater cause. A delusion that the ends justify the means. If the colleague
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or friend refuses to participate in the thought reform, a lie is often suggested or a financial offer
used to persuade collaboration.
If one may quote myself on some of the media's participitation in breaching Article 9 of the
Human Rights Act: 'The media's psychological violence is far more sinister than physical violence,
because it is based on subliminal warfare and behaviour modification through the moving image'
(Wakefield 2013: 138). This is how Freud's psychoanalysis as a treatment can be abused and used
instead as a metapsychological attack utilising dynamic and topographic methodologies. If a unique
thinker refuses to work with or for certain authorities, thought coercion can be initiated to dissolve
his or her intellect and in the most extreme cases used to destroy the individual's humanity. This is
sometimes initiated if the individual demonstrates considerable power contrary to the confines of
the state or makes a considerable fortune in the black economy which is unregulated by jealous
authorities. If this unique thinker is a good, hard working citizen then the government has no
grounds under law to imprison the individual. The alternative method sometimes used to regulate
the unique anomaly is to trick the individual's community into engaging with pedagogic coercion.
This pedagogic coercion is sometimes catalyzed by the illusion that it is for the improvement of the
individual or society, when it is actually for manipulating people to become instruments for the
coercing parties’ interests or envy. This mass manipulation is to force people to think in a manner
which can be contained. Due to the unethical nature of many mind-control technologies and the fact
that their use breaches Human Rights Acts, the vast majority of experiments are conducted without
the subjects' consent. 'One of the unsolved problems in motor control science is how the brain
orchestrates the movement of multiple body parts as a unified action (e.g., bimanual movement)'
(Yokoi, Hirashima & Nozaki 2011: 17058). The current phase in the neuro-scientific studies into
psychopathology and how the brain orchestrates movements (which have superseded Freudian
psychoanalysis) are utilised on both witting and unwitting patients. In the past, these experiments
have been brutal and some even fatal, resulting with unexplained suicides. Documentation and
video footage of these experiments that have resulted in fatalities are usually shredded and erased
by the coercive parties, so that no tangible evidence remains. When questioned by external parties,
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such as the European Parliament, answers are often refused or covered up on the grounds that it
cannot divulge information which is classified for use only by the Secret Intelligence Service.
This is not necessarily a sinister act by certain ministers, but an attempt to obscure mistakes,
errors and blunders in the aftermath of condoning the funding of torture, instead of curing societal
problems. Resources and technology which where originally designed to execute coercive
experiments for noble reasons have been misused and abused. The police hesitate to intervene
because they are subordinated in hierarchy to the government's secret intelligence services. Despite
clear breaches of international human rights that protect fundamental freedoms (such as those
outlined in the European Convention on Human Rights) lawyers are also often reluctant to
intervene, as they are threatened themselves with becoming a target of psychological
experimentation endorsed and sponsored by either the government, City of London Corporation or
other anonymous medical research coalitions. The Secretary – General of the United Nations
himself has to consider by imposing sanctions to ensure human rights, there is a danger of
hypocritically oppressing a state's right to freedom, thus undermining the very concept of freedom
itself.
These institutions have the power to setback careers in law, particularly in Cambridge, Oxford
and London where they academically have the most connections, influence, anchorage and
leverage. This is partly because the City of London Corporation is older than Parliament and runs
its own U.K Central Criminal Court. The City of London Corporation is the power model that
Parliament is based on. Despite operating on a non-party political basis, the City Corporation runs
its own police force and shares some mutual sponsors with the U.K government. This shared
geography and funding helps ensnare, control and manipulate others financially and politically. It
also prevents the disclosure and revelation of infringements of civil liberties due to the monopoly
on power the corporatocracy has in England. Corporate oligarchy often has no respect for European
law due to direct ties with banks to fund any potential legal battles in the European Court of Human
Rights. As there is a secretive entanglement between several elements of the corporatocracy,
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collusion to fabricate stories and mislead others continues, as there is a huge financial infrastructure to support deceptions. This has provided a psychoanalytical framework to allow people to
be tortured without any tangible reason and in some extreme scenarios slowly killed, creating
unwitting martyrs. When one kills someone, one dies oneself, however this is sometimes justified
by claiming that the persecuted individual held opinions contrary to the ruling hierarchy. Freedom
of thought is no longer acceptable and to control free thinkers, a complete invasion and evacuation
of innocent souls occurs. This is often an enslavement which the individual is unaware of, as he or
she walks around freely but is secretly owned by the state. In our times of Post-Freudian
psychopathology and globalization, products and people are mass produced on a global assembly
line of university campuses and financed on global stock exchanges. Those who extract themselves
from dissolving completely into the being of others are deemed an ideological threat. Especially
those who do not utilize public means of transport, make use of newspapers and other information
services that make every other person like the next. Rather than enlightening individuals, continual
use of mass information services, such as the habitual reading of the same newspapers, prevent
individuals from thinking as distinguishable and explicit beings. Pleasure, vision and judgement
become universal pleasure, vision and judgement - destroying the individual’s independence and
self-reliance. This has catalysed an environment allowing a spectacle of the scaffold to occur, where
an individual is metaphorically hanged without committing any crime. As no crime has been
committed, no physical punishment or incarceration can be administered, thus secret psychological
warfare is conducted instead. As there are no tangible signs of physical punishment, instincts are
turned inwards in what Nietzsche terms in his book Genealogy of Morals as 'the internalization of
man.' Freud was fond of reading Nietzsche and elaborated internalization in to an Oedipal matrix of
psychoanlysis, which has taken an interesting twist in World, Affectivity, Trauma: Heidegger and
Post-Cartesian Psychoanalysis:
'Although Binswanger's (1946) existential analysis produced some brilliant
phenomenological descriptions of the “world-designs” underlying various forms of
psychopathology, and Boss's (1963) Daseinanalysis freed the psychoanalytic theory of
therapy from the dehumanizing causal-mechanistic assumptions of Freudian
metapsychology, neither effort brought about a radicalisation of the psychoanalytic practice
itself or of the psychoanalytic process' (Stolorow 2011: 1).
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This internalization is a complex process and requires a sophisticated process to be created in our
post-totalitarian era. The preliminary preparation requires the control of communication and
information surrounding the targeted individual. A media conglomerate such as News Corp is an
example of a single company that controls books, newspapers, magazines, radio, and satellite
television, making it possible for an individual to have their entire phenomenological knowledge of
the world from one source. With this existential power over the individual, a significant degree of
dehumanizing manipulation or isolation from reality can be transfixed onto the unwitting person.
This combined with the individual's community planning and orchestrating the daily experiences of
the individual in advance, can trick the individual into believing that their life is spontaneous when
it is not. The partial staging of the individual’s life combined with media conglomerates control of
information alters the individual's thought processes to conform to those of the collective in power.
When objections are raised on grounds of ethics by those who refuse to take part in the
manipulation, their objections are often silenced by the absurd notion that torture is thought reform
for a utilitarian objective. The torture is claimed to be a cure, to prevent civil wars, rebellions,
insurrections and mass disturbances such as those witnessed in the recent rioting in London.
This is a preventive measure to stop alliances powerful enough to alter the balance of power in
England. The secret intelligence service and vigilante offshoots wish to isolate individuals because
they do not want any army on the streets apart from the police. This is why emotional manipulation
and organized control of social circles is implemented to make attitudinal and behavioural changes
in powerful, potentially subversive figures. Rather than physically confining the individual, the
environment is controlled instead. This is much more effective, as the individual is beaten into
submission psychologically with brain washing techniques. In some cases this has replaced the
political ritual of public executions, as a ceremony where power is manifested. In some cases,
where the individual has not broken the law and caused neither harm nor injury, but eclipsed the
authority of those in power, these measures are initiated. It is not so much because of bitter
contamination from the authorities in power but a task to re-establish a balance of power through
diminishing the light of the star. Sometimes the star is completely extinguished, other times the
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dignity of the star is removed to re-establish dis-symmetry between the sovereign and the individual
in question. 'Power is in inflicting pain and suffering. Power is in tearing human minds to pieces
and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing' (Orwell 1989: 279). The
sinister nature of Orwell's prophetic words has been undermined, ideologically censored and sugar
coated by Hollywood films such as Peter Weir's The Truman Show (1998), where the protagonist
has cameras following him everywhere twenty-four hours a day. The Orwellian reading of The
Truman Show can be juxtaposed with a Sadeian reading, where the hero / victim of torture has no
escape into reality. On a meta level, as fictions regulate reality, after watching a satirical comedydrama like The Truman Show the spectator becomes desensitized to overt surveillance from cameras
as they go about their daily lives. Not only has it become second nature to not question the
proliferation of surveillance, the general public has been tricked into archiving photographic diaries
of themselves on computers, social networking websites, mobile phones and other portable devices.
This is what Freud's The Psychopathology of Everyday Life would have to take into account if it
was written today. Also, the war of the roses, if it was to return today, would take place on the
psychological battlefield under the watchful, internal gaze of the thought police. The Queen today
holds her Parliament under the council and guidance of those wishing to captivate, map and hack
our nations psyche – one neuron at a time. The chair of state depends on the virtual disappearance
of free society. Successful governments of the modern world seems to be pragmatic, rather than
moral. Echoes of the ambivalent nature of the autonomous individual socially resound in Richard
Duke of York and Nineteen Eighty-Four alike. Now that we are all aware of the psychoanalytic and
neuro-scientific warfare that many of us are subjected to, perhaps it time for those of us afflicted to
forgive the unforgiveable with a dignity and integrity lacking in the perpetraters. Refined nobility is
found in Derrida's words on forgiveness.
'Each time forgiveness is effectively exercised, it seems to suppose some sovereign power.
That could be the sovereign power of a strong and noble soul, but also a power of State
exercising uncontested legitimacy, the power necessary to organise a trial, an applicable
judgement or, eventually, acquittal, amnesty or forgiveness' (Derrida 2005: 59).
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As individuals or as a collective let us exercise this sovereign power, and forgive the unforgiveable
with the nobility, dignity and integrity of Kings and Queens. Thus we should clarify and demystify
the neuro-mysticism of Colebrook's recent essay that introduces issue 18 of the Parrhesia Journal,
2013 which cites Blakemore's Neuro Everything, Revealing the Secrets of the Human Brain lecture
and Derrida's On Touching: Jean-Luc Nancy book, as its reference material. Touch or forgiveness
creates the salvation and cure needed for quick resolutions, as no side survives from any protracted
warfare; this is a strength of Colebrook's neural studies. A weakness of her dissection is that she
fails to mention that we have now developed the technology to read human minds through hacking
the live activity of 100, 000 million neurons per brain and the 10, 000 connections on each of these
neurons. The University of Cambridge's nano-technology labs have been designing nanobots for
several years to replace neurons in the human brain with artificial nerve cells and/or to attach on to
targeted neurons to hack the reverse polarity of electrical discharges (electrical pulse, pulse neuron)
in the neural synapse. All nanobots are coupled to the central and peripheral neural system – so
private, internal thoughts can be hacked without any invasive surgery and broadcast externally. The
RFID signals (electromagnetic frequency EMF) of electrical discharges in the synapse between two
neurons are similar to any other currents you find in circuit board pathways. Once you master
neuro-hacking data, you can broadcast people's private, internal thoughts (without their consent)
and other brain waves – as an audio signal in a frequency of your choice. Waves from the implants
are collected by devices similar to radio – transmitter receivers to form neural, cognitive mapping
databanks on computer hard-disk drives. This neuro-informatic data can be manipulated by rigging
environments with mini-speakers in-built in to walls and furniture, if one wanted to fake the
symptoms of paranoid, schizophrenic delusions – however none of us attached to / affirming real,
everyday life are fooled by artificial input signals, in failed attempts at choreographing surrealist
counter-experiences.
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There is nothing mystical or surrealist about any of my work and a letter dated November 18th
2013 sent to the Vice – Chancellor of Cambridge University, was signed by 130 senior members of
the University demanding a stop to the covert surveillance on the political and social activities of
students and their friends in Cambridge, England by Cambridgeshire Constabulary, neuro-hackers,
informers and spys. The Guardian newspaper also exposed these activities by the police in
Cambridge by publishing (on the 14th November 2013) secret footage of Cambridgeshire police
inappropriately and unjustifiably infiltrating those involved in student union activities. The neuro –
hacking aspect of this medical scandal has largely been hidden through blackmail and coercion;
however it was mentioned in public after the Cambridge Union Society concluded that 'institutional
intrusion into our personal privacy has gone to far' after a debate on the 24th October 2013 featuring
David Davis MP (former Shadow Home Secretary); Peter Tatchell and Nick Pickles. Thus we
should join these three gentlemen in actively challenging the erosion of civil liberties across the
world, as well as, mount a legal challenge against the U.K Government's Home Office's mass
surveillance programme which is attempting to hide neuro-hacking in its data analysis.
Derrida once visited South Africa's first black President Mandela's jail cell where Mandela spent
27 years in the notorious Robben Island prison. Despite this incarceration by the government,
Mandela forgave the symbolic role of presidency in South Africa and himself was inaugurated
President of South Africa in 1994. In August 1998, Derrida was invited to speak at several
universities in South Africa on the topic of forgiveness. Derrida's address to students at the
University of Western Cape, South Africa showed his powerful sensitivity to pure forgiveness with
a refined heroism. In the light of Mandela's recent death, let us reinterpret pure forgiveness in
relation to death and reconcile ourselves before it is too late. In memory of the anti-apartheid
revolutionary thinkers Derrida and Mandela; as individuals or as a collective, let us attempt to
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exercise a sovereign power, to forgive the unforgiveable with the nobility, dignity and integrity of
Kings and Queens.
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